Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 93 i 3D Artist

Redshift is a production-quality GPUaccelerated final frame renderer capable of rendering images several times faster than CPU-based solutions, while offering the features and flexibility of a state-of-the-art CPU renderer. Its story officially began in 2013 when Redshift Rendering Technologies was founded by videogame veterans Panagiotis ‘Panos’ Zompolas, Nicolas Burtnyk and Rob Slater. Since then, a user base of thousands has built up worldwide, including notable studios such as Glassworks, Blue Zoo, OutpostVFX, Original Force, Jim Henson's Creature Shop, Guru, Shed and MediaMonks. Feathers in the cap include Hollywoodproductionssuchas Fury, The ExpendablesandAloha,multipleall-CGNetflix and Amazon original series as well as hundreds of TV, print and web ads. We caught up with Redshift’s CTO and co-founder Panos Zompolas, co-founder of Blue Zoo Tom Box, OutpostVFX managing director Danny Duke and Head of 3D…

01 The layout blocking phase For the Age of Vultures renders I used Irradiance Point Cache as a primary GI bounce and Irradiance Point Cloud as a secondary, which gave me really fast render times (ten minutes in 2K). Because of the quick rendering speed, I was able to get more iterations and this helped me to make faster progress. 02 Make the characters Inspired by the design of 17th century plague doctor costumes, I made characters in a similar style. The character's body was sculpted in ZBrush and the mask was made with 3ds Max. Redshift's Architectural shader was used for the robe with some translucency, and for skin I used Redshift's Skin shader. 03 Design the machine A steampunk theme was used for the central machine. Reusing elements…

James Suret James is currently a full-time web developer and freelance 3D artist. He is constantly developing his portfolio with the aim of working as a concept artist in the games/entertainment industry. His main focus is creating original creatures and illustrations. Relic Seeker ZBrush, Photoshop (2013) An alien elder observes his navigational device in search of ancient artefacts. This was created using DynaMesh and Insert Meshes. Relic Scavanger ZBrush, Photoshop (2014) A team of aliens use their mechanical vehicle to find ancient relics. Created using Insert Meshes and DynaMesh, the Curves feature was used to create the pipes and tentacles. Tridecca ZBrush, Photoshop (2014) Clay render of an insect-inspired creature. This was made in ZBrush using DynaMesh and was created for a personal project…

Our experts The best artists from around the world reveal specific CG techniques 3ds Max Matthias Develtere develterematthias.wordpress.com Matthias is a junior 3D artist at MachineGames. He loves making vehicles for his sci-fi universe Houdini Rainer Duda rainer-d.de Rainer is a Houdini TD specialising in environments, simulations and volumetric effects Maya Jahirul Amin jahirulamin.com Jahirul is a 3D trainer at Double Negative. He has a passion for observing and dissecting the real world Working in the videogames industry is really awesome, especially when you get some kick-ass concept art to base your work on. But at the same time, it’s double the amount of fun if you can design it yourself and then model it. It’s just something to be proud of if you can say “Yes I designed this…

Since its original release in 2014, Substance Painter has established itself as essential software for texture artists, especially in the videogames industry. It offers an intuitive software solution for creating PBR textures, which is now the standard in every major game engine. The 2.0 release comes in two different price models for indie developers and standard company licences. It also adds a lot of new features, enabling you to work with brushes, materials and masks in more efficient and creative ways. Artists familiar with Substance Painter will feel right at home upon the first load of the new 2.0 build. While the tools and functionality remain in the same place, the UI has enjoyed a subtle but sleek update that adds bright blue lines on top of the shelf tabs…

BFX Festival runs from 10 to 16 October at the Bournemouth International Centre. The Pro day, run in collaboration with The Foundry, is aimed at visual effects professionals, where the latest techniques and softwares will be discussed as well as Festival activity with talks and workshops from industry professionals on making the best films and games of 2015 and 2016. A family-orientated weekend then follows. Festival director Sofronis Efstathiou said, “Every year BFX just keeps growing, we have involvement from the biggest studios in the world, superstars of the visual effects industry who want to be a part of the Festival, share their work and give insights into some of the biggest and best movies and games – there will be something for everyone, from hands-on activities for children right…

NVIDIA’s top-end professional graphics card has received a mid-cycle upgrade aimed at relieving bottlenecks faced by professionals working on resource-demanding projects to tight schedules. Based on the same hardware as the existing Quadro M6000, the second-generation GPU now has an incredible 24GB of VRAM, the highest amount available on a single-GPU graphics card. Erik Strauss, executive director of software development, Sony Pictures Imageworks commented: “We regularly push the limits of our ability to display and interact with very complex scenes. The Quadro M6000 24GB gives us a ten-times performance boost with the throughput necessary to display these types of large scenes smoothly and interactively.”…

The Blender Foundation’s newest release has wide-ranging updates including Cycles rendering gaining a new method for subsurface scattering calculation, GPU support for smoke/fire and point density, customisable motion blur position, support for rolling shutter, custom baking passes with extra control over the direct and indirect contributions. For modelling, the Decimate modifier now takes symmetry into account, a Boolean tool is available in Edit-mode and there is an option to have default UV unwrapping for new geometry. For animation, a new Constraints interpolation method is added to give better results when interpolating non-uniformly scaled matrices and Cursor X can have fractional values when in Drivers mode.…

FREDERIC DAOUST artstation.com/artist/fredericdaoust23 Frederic is a newcomer to 3D Artist and got the cover on his first try! It’s a wonderful image, and you can learn to re-create it yourself in ZBrush, KeyShot and Photoshop on p42. 3DArtist username fred2303 JAMES SURET artstation.com/artist/zerojs On the eve of season six of Game Of Thrones, we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t commission a stunning dragon tutorial for you to play with. Get to grips with James’s masterpiece on p50. 3DArtist username zerojs PAUL HATTON jonathan-benainous.blogspot.com Learning the ins and outs of a solid professional pipeline is essential when you work in the industry. On p58, Paul reveals the 3ds Max to V-Ray pipeline he uses in the studio for stunning arch-vis. 3DArtist username Phatton MATTHIAS DEVELTERE develterematthias.wordpress.com It’s often…

POST-PRODUCTION My biggest challenge for this was to achieve the cold atmosphere of this specific place in Iceland. I increased the main light a couple of times, using light blue layers set to screen and desaturated them when the light got too much colour. The vignette was done with colour brushes – not with a gradient – for better control. Laurentiu Stanciu leadsonarchitects.com Laurentiu is an arch-vis artist. He specialises in creating digital images and loves his job Software 3ds Max, V-Ray, Photoshop Voronoi Harpa Iceland, 2016…

Frederic Daoust Frederic is a 3D character artist who has been working in the videogames industry since 2013. He is currently working at BioWare Montreal and has been working on projects like Mass Effect: Andromeda, Doom, Tomb Raiderand Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Exomancer ZBrush, KeyShot, Photoshop (2015) This character was created during preparation for the ZBrush Sculpt-Off 2015. This is one of the four-weekly characters that was created to practise speed. Dark witch ZBrush, Photoshop, Quixel, 3ds Max, V-Ray (2014) The bust of this character (created by Kenju Kim back in 2013) was sculpted. A year later, Frederic decided to finish the model and use it to learn V-Ray. Time-Mage ZBrush, Photoshop, Quixel (2015) This character was also created during the preparation for the…

“There are perfectly satisfactory tools within 3ds Max and V-Ray that enable users to get very similar results to paid-for plugins” Software 3ds Max and V-Ray Learn how to Use Particle Flow Master the VRayInstancer Colour correct in V-Ray Add V-Ray Lens Effects Concept I love warm grey tones and was keen to bring a richness of colour to my artwork for this project. I focused, therefore, on a small range of colour tones that would complement each other and bring the whole scheme together. This 3D visual was created using only 3ds Max and V-Ray. There were no other external plugins utilised for any of it, and that includes the grass and trees. All of the post-production was done using all of the tools found within the V-Ray Frame…

Crowd simulations are by far one of the most interesting areas in modern computer graphics for movies and TV shows. Houdini 15 from Side Effects Software has probably the best toolset to create and control large crowds in terms of movement and interaction with the digital world. In this tutorial we will make use of a bunch of shelf tools to save time. At first, though, there must be a character. Usually the Houdini crowd simulation network takes all character HDAs as input, which includes a character mesh, rigging information and animations such as walk cycles – regardless of hand-animated or mocap data. The first network will render out so-called agent information files from a character to the hard disc; bake agent is the function that will do the job…

TEXTURING I started working on this environment with the goal of challenging myself and the Quixel SUITE. I used a consistent Color ID map preset and automated all the texture bases with the SUITE, allowing me to spend most of my time polishing and making the textures unique. The models were created in Maya and the scene rendered in Unreal Engine 4. Wiktor Öhman artbywiktor.com Wiktor is art lead at Quixel, working with promotional art and learning material Software Quixel SUITE, Maya, Unreal Engine 4 Quixe lSUITE Spacex Inspired Environment, 2016…

In the third and final diary entry from my time with the Dell Precision 7710, I want to focus in on a specific tool called the Dell Precision Optimizer. This is a really clever tool that puts control of the system into the user’s hands. Brilliant! During my time with the workstation I’ve found it invaluable for speeding up my workflow and ensuring that I can stay focused on my projects rather than coping with slowdowns. There are three main sections, but I found the ‘Profile and Policies’ tab to be the most helpful in my day to day. This gives you a list of profiles that can be utilised, and the left-hand pane lets you activate and deactivate these. It’s as simple as activating the profile and then launching…

Lego Sport Car by Alessio Rossi 3DA username songuai Alessio Rossi say: “Being a big fan of Lego products, I created this 3D sports car model. I like to reconstruct 3D Lego sets and make them as realistic as possible.“ We say: This is a near perfect re-creation of a Lego set – the plastic materials are so good it looks like you can reach out and touch it. Excellent work! Back 2 the Jungle by Christos Panagos 3DA username 3dots Christos Panagos says: “An exterior view of a villa – it’s an old style but also minimal and simple. I hope you like it! A trip to the past is always necessary when you want to design the future.“ We say: This is a lovely scene from…

“I created this image with the intention of learning and testing V-Ray for Blender in an actual production; a sort of trial by fire. I took my inspiration for this image from the many times I struggled to pull out my earphones while in a crowded public vehicle”Julian Santiago, The Perils of Modern Vampire Hunting, 2016 Julian Santiago juliansantiago.artstation.com Julian is a 3D generalist with four years of studio experience in advertisements and VFX Software Blender, V-Ray, Fusion, Photoshop Work in progress… “I have recently worked for 30 different music studios, creating the artwork for albums, webpages and so on. They all seem to love this sci-fi robot stuff; the music is between dubstep and a cinematic, so I did this for one of them”Felipe Pesantez, Stalker, 2015 Felipe Pesantez…

Paul Hatton Paul has been working in the 3D visualisation industry for over a decade and has fulfilled various roles during this time. He started off as a 3D artist in a small team and has progressed to leading a team at a different studio. He loves getting to grips with new technologies that make his life as an artist easier. Knick-Knacks , 3ds Max, V-Ray (2015) This is a collection of fairly pointless knick-knacks arranged on a side table and shelf. Paul wanted to create something simple with a complementary colour palette. Waiting for you, 3ds Max, V-Ray (2015) This image begs the viewer to come in and sit down. The egg chair just looks so comfortable! With the daylight streaming in through the window it…

Welcome to part two of our parkour animation tutorial in Maya. Continuing on from where we left off in issue 91, in this tutorial, rather than working through all the shots one by one which could become very repetitive, we’ll be focusing on just one shot. However, through this focus we’ll be sharing a workflow with you that you can use as a sort of template for every proceeding shot. The shot we’ve decided to focus on is the fifth, where our character performs the dash vault. We’ll start by taking a look at our existing poses to see if we are 100 per cent happy with them. After that, we’ll add some additional poses (the in-betweens) so that things flow more predictably when we transition our animation curves from…

“This year’s headline ‘Blending Realities’ puts an emphasis on sectors that are already deeply immersed in new forms of reality”Marie Ketzscher, FMX public relations FMX will encourage ticket-holders to engross themselves in all kinds of realities at the Haus der Wirtschaft in Stuttgart, Germany from 26 to 29 April. “In 2016, FMX enters its third decade at the forefront of digital entertainment, thus continuing to illuminate the latest trends across the effects, animation, VR, games and transmedia industries,” explains Marie Ketzscher, FMX public relations. “This year’s headline ‘Blending Realities’ puts an emphasis on sectors that are deeply immersed in new forms of reality, such as virtual reality, augmented reality and beyond. Prominent confirmations include VR experts Jan Pinkava, who came up with the Oscar-winning feature Ratatouille, or Andrew Daffy, who…

Crytek is offering full access to the latest version of its triple-A game engine, CryEngine V, and source code for a fee of their choice. Those who choose to pay can nominate up to 70 per cent of the fee to go to Crytek’s Indie Development Fund that supports indie projects worldwide via grants. Crytek’s founder, CEO and president, Cevat Yerli, said of the new release: “CryEngine V represents our commitment to not only offering developers today’s most advanced engine technology, but also to making it as accessible as possible. “The arrival of CryEngine Marketplace, the revamped engine UI and new support channels will make it easier than ever to tap into the power of CryEngine – at a price that feels comfortable for each and every individual. Community is…

01 Whisper Of Darling by Mohsen Hashemi 3DA username Mohsen Hashemi Mohsen Hashemi says: “This was not just work for me – it was inspired by the great Persian poet Hafez and it contains all my emotion and passion from the art of love. Love is immortal.“ We say: There’s so much to talk about here, but we think the best areas of this image are the lighting and the incredible plaster texture that Mohsen has achieved on the back wall. 02 Frank – Detective Special by Hernan Zuniga 3DA username hernan3d Hernan Zuniga says: “Frank is a special detective I’ve made, inspired by Seventies movies. I’d like to thank my friend Richard Kazuo for the rig and all at Techno Image for the support.“ We say: This…

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